| Sian Phillips
Siân Phillips CBE, is a Welsh actress who was born Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips in Betws, Carmarthenshire, Wales, on May 14, 1934.
She has made many films and television programmes, but is undoubtedly best remembered as the evil Livia in the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius (BBC2, 1976). She also appeared as Ann, the unfaithful wife of Alec Guinness's character George Smiley, in the BBC1 espionage dramas Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982), adapted from John le Carré's novels of the same names.
She married Peter O'Toole and they had two daughters, Pat and Kate, but she subsequently divorced him. She wrote about this tempestuous period of her life in the second volume of her autobiography, Public Places. She later married British actor Robin Sachs, from whom she is also now divorced.
In June 2000, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. She is also a leading light in Social, Welsh and Sexy (SWS), the London-based organisation for Welsh socialites.
She is a Welsh-speaker: in the first volume of her autobiography (Private Faces) she notes that she spoke Welsh before she spoke English as a child.
She is also a great lover of the domestic cat, about whom she has written in her autobiography and elsewhere.
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